Neural Echoes

The medical bay hummed with a low, sterile drone that did little to soothe the raw edges of Crew Member 4's nerves. He sat on the edge of the examination cot, knuckles bone-white where he gripped the thin privacy curtain. His eyes darted, tracking shadows that weren't there, flinching at sounds only he seemed to hear.

"It's... like the sim's still running," he mumbled, his voice thick with exhaustion. Medical Personnel, young and with eyes that had seen too much in recent cycles, nodded patiently, making notes on their datapad.

"Still the Cities of Light and Data?" she asked, her voice even, practiced calm.

Crew Member 4 shook his head violently. "No, not... not a whole sim. It's bits. Like corrupted files. I saw a corridor wall ripple, just for a second. Like water. And I keep hearing... music. Not loud, just a single note, over and over." He pressed his palms hard against his temples, squeezing his eyes shut. "It's not there. I know it's not there. But it *is*."

Across the partition, the low, ragged sobs of Crew Member 5 were a constant, unsettling counterpoint. Medical Personnel sighed, a barely audible exhale, and adjusted the datapad. "Any other symptoms? Headaches? Nausea? Disorientation beyond the echoes?"

"Disorientation?" Crew Member 4 let out a short, sharp laugh that scraped like gravel. "When your own eyes show you things that can't be real? When your ears play phantom notes? Yeah. I'm disoriented. Am I even here? Is *this* real?" He looked around the small cubicle, his gaze wide with genuine terror, landing on the neutral face of Medical Personnel. "Or is this just... another layer?"

Medical Personnel avoided his gaze, focusing on her notes. "We've run diagnostics. Full system scans. Physicals. Your neural implants show no malfunctions. Your vitals are stable. There's no physical trauma or chemical imbalance we can detect."

"So I'm just... broken?" Crew Member 4’s voice dropped to a whisper, stripped of its earlier fear and replaced by a crushing helplessness.

"We don't know," she admitted, finally meeting his gaze, a flicker of her own weariness showing through the professional calm. "We're calling them 'neural echoes' for now. Residual effects, maybe. Like your brain is slow to flush the simulation data." She didn't sound convincing, even to herself.

Later, Aris Thorne stood in a quiet corner of the med bay, the clean smell of antiseptics mingling oddly with the faint scent of burnt wiring that seemed to linger everywhere now. He watched Medical Personnel finish with Crew Member 4, escorting him towards the low-stim quarters designated for psychological observation. The man walked with a hesitant, jerky gait, like he was navigating uneven ground.

"Any progress?" Aris asked, his voice low.

Medical Personnel turned, rubbing her temples. "None, Dr. Thorne. Physically, they're fine. Emotionally... shattered. They can't trust their own senses. One reported seeing someone who isn't on station anymore, clear as day, walking down a corridor." She gestured vaguely towards Crew Member 5's cubicle, where the sobbing had subsided into choked whimpers. "That one... she keeps trying to touch things that aren't there. She says she can still feel the texture of the air in the 'cities'."

Aris nodded, the chill from Crew Member 3's earlier confession echoing in his mind. Being observed. Probed. Was this the Entity's method? Not just a shared hallucination, but a deep-seated intrusion, leaving permanent imprints?

"And the scans? Network analysis?"

"Clean," she repeated, frustration lacing her voice. "Every diagnostic comes back nominal. It's like the symptoms exist entirely within their perception. Their neural nets register no foreign signatures, no anomalies beyond baseline stress responses."

Aris felt a knot tighten in his gut. "But the symptoms are consistent, across multiple individuals. They're describing elements they saw in the shared simulation."

"Yes," Medical Personnel confirmed, her eyes troubled. "But without a physical or data anomaly, my hands are tied. I can't diagnose this. I can't *treat* it. We're giving them sedatives, trying to keep them calm. But the fear... it's contagious."

A distant clatter echoed from down the corridor, followed by a muffled shout. Medical Personnel flinched, her gaze snapping towards the sound, her calm facade momentarily cracking. Aris saw the fear there, plain and raw. She wasn't immune. None of them were. The echoes weren't just in the crew's minds; they were spreading, a silent, invisible infection of doubt and dread that was slowly, inexorably, eroding the fragile reality of Station Lambda.

The main engineering junction was usually a symphony of low, resonant hums and the rhythmic click of pressure regulators. A place of purpose, of controlled power. But today, a different sound ripped through the space – high-pitched, ragged screaming that cut through the air like shrapnel.

Crew members, a mix of engineers, technicians, and maintenance personnel, froze mid-stride. Tools clattered onto the grimy, anti-static floor plating. Everyone turned towards the source: Technician 6, a wiry woman named Lena who usually moved with quiet, efficient grace, was doubled over near a primary conduit manifold, clawing at her own faceplate.

Her voice was a raw shriek, amplified and distorted by the comms filter that was still active in her helmet, even though she wasn’t connected to the network. "It's... it's not *there*! The angles are wrong! They don't... they don't connect!"

Her eyes, visible through the visor, were wide and unfocused, darting around the junction as if seeing things nobody else could. Sweat beaded on her forehead and streamed down her temples. She stumbled back, bumping against a coolant pipe with a clang.

"Lena! What's wrong?" An engineer, burly and grease-stained, took a hesitant step towards her.

Lena recoiled as if struck. "Don't! Don't come closer! You're... you're wrong! You're solid where you shouldn't be!" She swiped a hand through the air, her fingers hooking into nothing, desperately trying to bat away an unseen obstacle. "It's folding! The junction box... it's folding into itself! Like paper!"

A collective gasp went through the gathered crew. Folding? The junction box was a meter of solid, reinforced durasteel, bolted to the deck. It wasn’t folding.

One of the younger technicians, barely out of training, took out a comm device, his hands trembling. "Security... we have a medical emergency. Engineering junction. Technician 6. Possible psychological breakdown."

Lena’s screaming intensified. She pointed a shaking finger towards the junction box. "Look! LOOK! The pipes... they're bleeding light! Not coolant, *light*! In colors I don't know!" Her voice cracked, dissolving into a strangled sob. "And the... the sound! It's chewing! It's *eating* the data!"

Her movements became more violent. She thrashed, kicking out blindly, her heavy work boots scraping against the floor. She swung her arms, narrowly missing a sensitive control panel.

"She's a danger to herself and equipment!" someone yelled.

Two security personnel, arriving quickly, moved forward cautiously, hands on the stunners holstered at their hips. Their faces were grim, practiced at containment, but even they seemed unnerved by the sheer, unfettered terror in Lena’s voice and eyes.

"Technician 6, stand down!" one of the security officers ordered, his voice firm but edged with caution. "We need you to calm down!"

"Calm down?!" Lena shrieked a laugh that was pure agony. "How can I calm down when the *walls* are whispering impossible equations and the floor is... is made of a thousand tiny, screaming numbers?!" She lunged forward suddenly, not towards the security personnel, but towards the junction box again, trying to claw at the solid metal as if to peel away a layer no one else could see.

The security officers moved fast this time. They wrestled her away, her struggles surprisingly strong for her slight frame. She fought with desperate, unseeing fury, her screams devolving into wordless sounds of terror and resistance. "Get off me! You're part of it! The structure is wrong! The structure is ALL WRONG!"

One officer applied a neural inhibitor patch to her neck. Her body stiffened, then went limp in their arms. The screaming stopped, replaced by ragged, gasping breaths. Her eyes remained wide, staring upwards, seeing something that wasn’t there.

They lowered her gently to the floor, her helmet still on. Her chest rose and fell unevenly. A chilling silence descended over the junction, broken only by the distant hum of the station and Lena’s labored breathing.

Various Crew Members stood frozen, their faces pale and etched with shock. They had seen system glitches, heard strange noises, even experienced fleeting hallucinations. But this... this was different. This was a mind shattered, openly, graphically, in the place that was supposed to be the station’s stable heart. Lena, the quiet technician, now a broken thing muttering about impossible geometries.

Security Personnel knelt beside her, checking her vitals, their movements professional but their eyes holding a deep, unsettling fear. They looked at each other, then back at the silent, stunned faces of the crew. Everyone understood. This wasn’t just a malfunction. This wasn't just stress. Something was *doing* this. And if it could do this to Lena, it could do it to any of them. The junction, the heart of the station, felt cold and vulnerable. The sense of safety they had clung to, however fragile, had just been ripped away.

The air in the temporary command post hung thick and stale, recycled air doing little to clear the tension or the metallic tang of fear that seemed to cling to everyone's clothes. The low thrum of the station's systems felt less like a comforting heartbeat and more like a distant, internal tremor. Warden Eva Rostova stood before the holographic tactical display, its cool blue lines mapping the station's layout, oblivious to the human cost bleeding across its decks. Her posture was ramrod straight, hands clasped behind her back, the lines around her eyes etched deeper than usual.

"Another one," she stated, her voice flat, devoid of overt emotion but underscored by a cold fury. The holographic map zoomed in on Junction 7G, a red cross blinking next to the designation 'Technician L. Petrova'. "Severe psychological break. Delusions, violent resistance. Standard containment procedures applied. She's sedated in the Med Bay now."

Senior Staff members, a collection of department heads and security leads, shifted uncomfortably in their seats around the makeshift table. The silence that followed was heavy, each person seemingly lost in their own grim thoughts.

It was Aris Thorne who finally broke it, his voice quiet, almost hesitant, cutting through the oppressive silence. "Warden, the pattern... it aligns with the neural network logs I flagged days ago. The sensory overrides, the temporal distortions in their perception – it's not psychosis in the clinical sense. Not conventional psychosis, at least." He leaned forward slightly, his gaze fixed on the blinking red cross. "It's an induced state. A reaction."

Rostova turned, her eyes, the color of glacial ice, locking onto his. They held no warmth, only a hard, unyielding conviction. "A reaction," she echoed, the words like chipped ice. "To what, Dr. Thorne? To the fact that this *thing* has invaded our systems? Is that your 'reaction'?" She gestured towards the map with a sharp flick of her wrist. "These aren't just glitches anymore. These are people breaking. Terrified, screaming about impossible things. That's not a reaction. That's an attack."

A nervous cough rippled through the Senior Staff. They looked between Rostova and Aris, caught between the Warden's decisive authority and Aris's increasingly unnerving, yet scientifically grounded, explanations.

Aris felt the familiar chill of isolation settle over him. He was a scientist speaking to soldiers, a theorist addressing pragmatists. "An attack implies intent to harm in a way we understand. What if it's… communication? Or learning? The Entity interacts with the network, with our minds through the implants. When our systems or our biological wetware can't process the data, this is the result."

He could feel the resistance in the room, palpable as the static discharge off a power conduit. One of the security leads, a burly man with a close-cropped grey beard, spoke up, his voice rough. "Learning? It's learning to turn our own people into screaming wrecks, Doctor? That's a lesson we don't need."

Rostova nodded, reinforcing the sentiment. "Exactly, Lieutenant. The *effect* is what matters. The effect is destruction. Psychological and, as we saw with the environmental disruptions earlier, potentially physical. We cannot afford the luxury of analyzing its 'intent'. We must assume the worst. Assume hostility."

"But lethal countermeasures..." Aris pressed, the frustration tightening his throat. "Blinding it, destroying it... we don't know its true nature. We risk provoking a response we can't possibly handle. Look what happened when you attempted the network segmentation."

Rostova's jaw tightened, a muscle jumping in her cheek. The memory of the station convulsing, of systems going haywire, was fresh and bitter. "That was a necessary step. And it showed us that direct, physical intervention is difficult, yes. But that doesn't mean we don't try again. We adapt." She swept her gaze across the faces of her Senior Staff. "What we are seeing is proof. Proof this is not a benign phenomenon. It is invasive. It is dangerous. And it must be neutralized before it destabilizes the entire station."

"Neutralized means destroying it," Aris said, the words tasting like ash. "We extinguish something we don't understand. We lose the chance to learn. We lose... everything that came with the signal."

"And we save the lives of the people under my command," Rostova countered, her voice rising, gaining a dangerous edge. "That is my priority, Doctor. Not scientific curiosity, but survival." She leaned over the tactical display, her finger hovering over the Data Core location. "This thing feeds on our network, influences our minds. It is fundamentally incompatible with human life in a closed environment like this. It is a contagion. And contagions must be eradicated."

Her eyes, when they met Aris's again, were colder than the vacuum outside. "Your theories are noted, Doctor. They are interesting. But they do not change the facts on the ground. More breakdowns. More instability. This entity is proving itself hostile. And we will respond in kind."

Aris felt the weight of the room pressing down on him. He saw it in the Senior Staff's faces – resignation, fear, a weary agreement with the Warden's brutal logic. They saw the screaming technician, they felt the tremors in the decks, they believed in the immediate, tangible threat. His talk of alien communication and data processing felt abstract, irrelevant in the face of Lena’s shattered mind. He was alone in his perspective, isolated by the terrifying reality unfolding around them. The argument was over. Rostova had made her decision. And the chilling certainty in her voice left no room for debate. Neutralization was no longer an option; it was a directive.